


Lost the Plot: A Parenthesis

by darrowby85



Series: The Scenic Route [3]
Category: All Creatures Great and Small (TV), All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot, Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Absurd, Crossover, Gen, Humor, Metafiction, Oblique-ish references to ACGAS-typical naughtiness, hints of unrequited love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 19:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15589077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darrowby85/pseuds/darrowby85
Summary: The Doctor is (politely) displeased.Features Tricki-Woo and Mrs. Pumphrey, offstage.





	Lost the Plot: A Parenthesis

The Doctor gently swung his legs down to the floor and used one hand to slowly push himself up into a standing position. Tentatively, he padded in his red socks across the Persian rug, holding on to various items of furniture for support. After his previous attempts, he was anxious lest a wave of dizziness or nausea should hit him, but succeeded in crossing the room without incident. He arrived at the fourth wall and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he said, attempting to bring a tone of polite authority to his voice. “I’ve been lying in bed for a couple of weeks now. It’s been wonderful to be looked after and everything, Mrs Hall is a very kind lady, and I do like that green quilt, but the thing is that I’m stuck here while everyone except me is having adventures and I feel that I’m not really living up to my job description. James and Tristan have been up in space and Turlough is out there on the Eye of Orion – sketching, _supposedly_ – while I’ve been languishing here on earth coughing and collapsing whenever you wanted the readers to feel sorry for me. Now I’m feeling more myself again, it’s getting to be really rather tedious. If you had to give me space flu – what sort of an unoriginal name was that, anyway? You could at least have come up with some fancy Latinate terminology – to facilitate your frankly ridiculous plot mechanics and have young Tristan crash my TARDIS, can’t you at least let me recover properly now so that I can repair her and resume my normal life of dashing about the cosmos? He’s a decent enough young fellow, if a little reckless, but it’s rather trying to look at a mirror image of yourself and be constantly reminded that with regeneration, you never know what you’re going to get.”

“I’m very sorry, Doctor,” I told him. “I had some plot ideas but wasn’t sure how to put them together. It really is a very nice quilt, and I even rescued that dressing-gown from Lady Cranleigh’s for you to wear, although that wasn’t mentioned in the episode at all.” I stopped there, realising that the dressing-gown thing had been pure self-indulgence on my part, based on how _absolutely ripping_ he had looked in it when he wore it in 1925. “Isn’t it better than languishing in a dungeon while the writer figures out how to get you out of there? I thought it would be nice to have someone looking after you for once. In most of your adventures, you end up getting bashed about, locked up or tortured with nobody to take care of you. You just have to dust yourself down and get on with the story. I thought you would appreciate the soft bed, tea and crumpets after all that.”

“That was indeed very considerate of you, and you know how much I love tea. The crumpets were delicious, too. Thank you very much. But I am beginning to suspect your motives in some of this. Can you genuinely say that you have never daydreamed about mopping my fevered brow? Or building your own benevolent version of Castrovalva for me to recuperate in? In which I am not ‘trapped’ in the strict technical sense but develop a strong disinclination towards leaving while there is honey still for tea?”

“Er, well…” I suppose you don’t get to be an intergalactic hero without having a good deal of insight into other people’s motivations, and such insight comes more easily when you’re being written by the person who has those motivations. (It’s almost like telepathy.) “OK, yes. I did want to look after you. But I’m not trying to keep you trapped in this story. I just haven’t got round to writing the next part yet.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” he said, arching his eyebrows. He really is such a smart aleck. Pretty much everyone quotes that wrongly, apart from _him_ , of course. Probably picked it up when he was drinking with Shakespeare, or ghostwrote it for him, or something. “'Look how much nicer I am to you than the BBC was', eh? What about the space flu, though? That wasn’t pleasant at all!”

“I’m sorry about the space flu. But if nothing unpleasant happened to you, there wouldn’t be a story, would there? I’m afraid that’s an occupational hazard of being a hero.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said, with a universe-weary sigh. “Writers of stories really do seem to have it in for one, sometimes. Tea and crumpets are certainly better than Cybermen and Daleks, and you have promised that you are going to give me a chance to play cricket. But as for making me wear this absurd dressing-gown _again_ …”

“I have given you pyjamas too, you know. With your favourite question-marks on them. You haven’t had to spend most of an episode walking down corridors with the dressing-gown open to your chest in my story. Nor wear a Pierrot costume. And in any case, this is just prose, without any visuals. For all the readers know, you could actually be wearing a baggy old cardigan.”

“Hmmm. But what about those _illustrations_ of yours? To be fair, you haven’t done an illustration of me in the dressing-gown yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time. I wonder whether these illustrations aren’t something of a pretext for downloading a ridiculous number of pictures of me from the internet. _Drawing references_ , indeed. How many _drawing references_ does anyone need?”

“Have you been rummaging around on my hard drive while I’ve been asleep?”

“You’ve given me so little else to do, and one must keep oneself occupied somehow. There’s only so many hours one can spend doing crosswords. You still haven’t managed to draw me properly, you know, despite all your references. You’re nowhere near as good as Turlough. And you’ve started writing me out of character now, too. I’m not usually quite this sardonic.”

“In my defence, I’m not the first person ever to have done that, but I will try to do better from now on. So, what sort of plot do you want? How do you want me to get you out of here?” (First rule of plotting: consult your protagonist ahead of time about all important plot decisions. Except, perhaps, ones in which he is attacked by monsters that are made of rubber or green versions of Dobbin the pantomime horse from _Rentaghost_. Sometimes it is necessary to preserve the element of surprise, particularly when the special effects aren’t very convincing.)

At this point, Tristan came in and looked quizzically towards the Doctor.

“Authorial conference,” said the Doctor.

“Aha, I see. Good stuff. Perhaps I can contribute too. I used to read through some of Mr. Wight’s drafts and make notes for him, or rather the real person I’m based on did. Wonderful chap, Mr. Wight.”

“We’re discussing what should happen next in the plot,” said the Doctor. “I was feeling rather grumpy about not having had much to do in this story so far. It must have been the aftereffects of the space flu that made me feel so out of sorts and out of character. I’m feeling much better now, though. Quite my old self.” He rocked backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet to illustrate this, and grinned broadly.

“I didn’t cut a very good figure at all in the last section of ‘The Scenic Route’,” said Tristan, turning towards me. “Made rather an ass of myself sashaying around in the Doctor’s costume and then crashing the TARDIS. Any chance of a rewrite?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” said the Doctor, before I could answer. “Web of time, and all that.”

“Well, I think the first thing to do, since you’re feeling better, is for you to change back into your normal costume. You’ll feel much more like getting back into action, then! It’s laid out on the chair. Unfortunately, your celery buttonhole has wilted and Mrs Hall has had to throw it away. I think it might have caught the space flu from you. It's obviously a very important part of your outfit although no-one seems to have taken the trouble to explain why. But there’s no problem – I’ll bring you a nice new celery stalk from the vegetable rack. ”

“Ah, but my previous celery was imaginary,” said the Doctor. “It came from an Edwardian yacht in space. Imaginary space vegetables keep for much longer than real ones. My first stick of celery, which was produced by by block transfer computations, lasted for a year and a half before it started going a bit brown around the edges.”

“That’s no problem,” said Tristan, breezily. “The celery from downstairs is imaginary too. We’re imaginary. Well, I’m not entirely imaginary, but I’m a fictionalised version of a real person, and this conversation we’re having now certainly never happened in real life. It’s far too silly. We look so similar that we're clearly being played by the same actor - perhaps due to budgetary constraints at the BBC - and are only appearing together in these scenes thanks to CGI. Or _smoke and mirrors_ , since I'm someone from the 1930s who hasn't heard of CGI."

“I meant _imaginary_ in the context of this story. Things that _we’re_ imagining. What we call in the trade second-order imaginariness or the doubly fictional. I would tell you to go and look up the entry on ‘Uqbar’ in James’s musty encyclopaedias in the cellar to give you an idea of what I mean, except that the episode in which James buys the encyclopaedias hasn’t happened yet and the encyclopaedia in question, despite being published in 1902, is the subject of a fiction that wasn’t written until 1940. Continuity can be rather confusing, sometimes, even when you’re not suffering from regeneration sickness.”

“Ah, I’m not sure how we’re going to manage to produce something that’s doubly imaginary in a veterinary practice in 1937. We do have quite a few interesting chemicals in the surgery…” mused Tristan. “Oh yes, I have an idea! I’ll ring Mrs Pumphrey, and ask her to ask Tricki-Woo to imagine one. I’m sure she won’t mind. She’s always been very forthcoming where food items are concerned.”

**********

“Here you are! To dear Uncle Doctor, from Tricki-Woo, Esquire,” said Tristan, bounding up the stairs with a very crisp-looking but entirely imaginary stick of celery. “Nothing but the best from Mrs. Pumphrey. She popped a very decent-looking bottle of port into the package, too.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Now, Doctor, if you’re ready to change, I’ll avert my gaze and insert a row of asterisks.”

Tristan gave a naughty grin. “If I were writing from the omniscient narrator point of view, I’d be sure to make full use of all the privileges that that afforded.”

“Yes, I rather imagine you would,” said the Doctor, with a raised eyebrow.

Tristan blushed and grinned again, a little sheepishly, realising that he must after all have left a copy of Health and Efficiency inside one of the more sedate publications that he had lent to his visitor.

“Tristan!” I said “Be more respectful! He’s very proper, you know. Hundreds of years old, and is supposed to be a good example to the young. No hanky-panky in the TARDIS, and all that.”

“I’m not supposed to be a good example to anyone. Quite the reverse, in fact!” said Tristan, laughing.

************

The Doctor, now back in his usual costume, turned to me: “Pleasant as this discussion has been, we don’t seem to have got much further with deciding on the plot.”

“There have been a lot of distractions. But look, I have got you better from the space flu, now. That’s progress.”

“Yes, indeed,” the Doctor said brightly. “No more shivering and shaking. Definitely an improvement.”

“I have a plot suggestion. You could write yourself into the story as a love-interest for me!” said Tristan. “Of course, our relationship would have to be ultimately doomed to failure because of a disapproving father or a strange obsession with goat dung, because the BBC has it in for me too, but we could have some fun first.” He gave me a very flirtatious look.

“Well… yes… I could do that…” I said, blushing and suddenly feeling very flustered.

“So, would your authorial avatar like to come to the Drovers’ with me this evening?”

It was very tempting, of course, but taking into account Tristan’s overdeveloped sense of humour and the presence of his exact lookalike, I was not at all convinced that I wouldn’t be the victim of some convoluted mistaken-identity prank sooner or later, even without the Doctor’s active collusion.

“Tristan. The author has to concentrate on writing the rest of the plot and doesn’t need this sort of distraction, and you know full well that Siegfried has forbidden you from going to the Drovers’ until we have finished mending the TARDIS,” said the Doctor. “Come on,” he added, putting his arm around Tristan’s shoulders, “Let’s go down to the paddock. While the author is working out where to go next with the plot, we can get started with the repairs, and then if the plot turns out to be too dull, we can fly off and have our own adventures instead.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a plot point in A Very Peculiar Practice as well as by one of my favourite Fifth Doctor episodes, Castrovalva, the fictional worlds of Jorge Luis Borges, Peter Davison’s caricature of himself in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot and Jim Wight’s biography of his father, The Real James Herriot, as well as by All Creatures Great and Small. It has also been pointed out to me that my story bears a remarkable similarity to a ‘Campion’ story by Margery Allingham, What to do with an Ageing Detective, which I genuinely haven’t read (honest, guv) in which Campion berates the author for certain plot decisions and accuses her of being in love with him. Now I am more inclined to believe those people who claim to have independently come up with the idea of writing a story set in a boarding-school for wizards…
> 
> The illustrations mentioned in the story are, of course, those in 'The Scenic Route'.
> 
> I was really restraining myself from any fourth-wall breaking and metafictional elements in the previous two stories, but here I have let it all out! If surreal, absurdist humour is not your thing, then skip straight to "Bowled Over", in which the fourth wall remains intact, and which also follows on from "Tea in Bed".


End file.
